Place · planned state capital · India
Gandhinagar
Also known as Gandhinagar
The planned capital of Gujarat at Gandhinagar on the Sabarmati, 23 kilometres north of Ahmedabad. The city was designed by Prakash M. Apte and the Gandhinagar Development Authority under Chief Minister Hitendra K. Desai from 1965 (after the 1960 Gujarat separation from Bombay State), with construction beginning 1966. Named for Mahatma Gandhi, Gandhinagar was conceived as a planned grid city — 30 sectors in a rectangular layout, with the Vidhan Sabha (Legislative Assembly) at the centre. The current Vidhan Sabha complex (1982, by Prakash Apte) is a modernist concrete structure. The 1992 Akshardham complex (one of India's largest Hindu temple complexes, built by the BAPS Swaminarayan Sanstha) and the 2017 Mahatma Mandir conference centre (hosting the Vibrant Gujarat summits) anchor the city's institutional and religious geography. The Infocity-DRDO-ISRO Satellite Earth Station technology corridor runs along the Gandhinagar-Ahmedabad highway.
- Function
- Authority & administration
- Patron dynasty
- Indian Union
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 23.216, 72.637
Connections (1)
- Successor capital ofAhmedabad / Karnāvatī / Āshāval
Gandhinagar replaced Ahmedabad as the capital of Gujarat state in 1970 after Gujarat's 1960 separation from Bombay State. Ahmedabad had served as the Gujarat capital from 1 May 1960 to 24 March 1970; the planned city of Gandhinagar on the Sabarmati 23 kilometres north was designed by Prakash M. Apte from 1965 under Chief Minister Hitendra K. Desai. The 1983 Secretariat shift and the 1992 Akshardham complex consolidated Gandhinagar's role; Ahmedabad remains the commercial-cultural capital while Gandhinagar is the administrative capital, together forming the Gandhinagar-Ahmedabad Ahmedabad Metropolitan Region.
Sources
Standard reference; district gazetteer and Wikipedia.
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